The Titans are ready to play ball. The Illinois Wesleyan University men’s baseball team begins their 2026 season with an astonishing 14-game road trip, starting with Greenville University on Friday, Feb. 20, 2026, with a triple-header spread out between two days.
2025 season recap: In their first season without legendary head coach Dennis Martel, the Titans played dominantly in the regular season, posting a 28-15 overall record.
Head coach Michael Kellar and his team won the program’s 25th College Conference of Illinois and Wisconsin title—IWU leads the CCIW in conference titles—and secured hosting rights for the CCIW championship with a 16-4 CCIW record.
In the CCIW championship, the Titans picked up wins over Millikin University and Carthage College, but were bounced by North Central College with 13-5 and 1-7 losses on May 9 and 10 respectively to spoil
their chances at an NCAA tournament appearance.
Off-season changes: The 2026 offseason saw an exodus of 14 players from the Titans roster, thirteen seniors and junior Jimmy Martin. The graduate class left some big gaps for the Titans in pitching, fielding and batting.
At the plate, a massive Justin Gadomski sized hole has emerged, as the graduated infielder finished his career ranked fifth in program history in career highest batting average (.385.)
Fellow infielder Jimmy Gurgone will be missed for both his field- ing and batting prowess. The 2025 Second Team All-CCIW honoree placed second in at bats, runs batted in, and stolen bases and third in hits and assists for the Titans in 2025.
In the outfield, the Titans will be without the three-time Academic All-CCIW and one-time CCIW Hitter of the Week Tristan Figus, who started over 80% of his appearances across four years with the Titans and put up an impressive 69 putouts for the second most among Titan outfielders last season.
Finally, while the bullpen was primarily led by a strong junior and first-year class last season, the Titans will still be without Luke Schwab and Brady Hartman, who combined for a 5-2 pitching record across 38.3 innings pitched last season.
Coach Kellar simply said “it’s tough” when discussing how hard it is to re-build a program when cornerstone seniors graduate.
“But the guys we had behind them got good looks at what it’s like to be a high-level baseball player,” Kellar said.
“I think for some of our younger guys, it was a great time for them to sit back and learn how those guys run,” he said.
Kellar added that he has been impressed with the jump in skill last year’s first-years and sophomores have made in the offseason, and that a few new transfers will also help fill the gaps the seniors left.
The Titans also added 11 new first-years—all from Illinois—to round out the team. While the class is slightly-smaller-than-average for the Titans in the post-Covid era, it brings many pitching prospects to the Titans.
“Looking back to the conference tournament last year, we were running some of our pitchers out for a second or third time deep into that conference tournament,” Kellar said.
“We wanted to add some depth and that’s why we brought in a number of pitchers and some transfers. We’ve also got some younger guys ready to step up as well.”
Kellar declined to name any particular freshmen for fans to keep their eyes out for, but addedthat many of the new players are pushing the rotation around and—while they may not start—have created good competition for the returning players.
One new addition to the team is first-year Luke Huffaker, who was a two-time Big 12 scholar athlete from Bloomington High School.
Huffaker credited the “culture and environment” Coach Kellar and assistant coach Josh Laurie are building with the Titans as one of the reasons for his decision to commit to Illinois Wesleyan.
He also said that he was most looking forward to getting to be on a winning team, being around his new teammates and improving as a player over the upcoming season.
Looking ahead: The Titans placed second in the preseason CCIW coaches poll released by the league on Friday, Feb. 6. The team got two of nine possible first-place votes, behind North Central College who got six of the remaining first- place votes, with Millikin taking the final vote and getting third in the poll.
“The regular season title was great,” Kellar said. “But at the end of the day, we came up short of our
ultimate goal of getting to an NCAA tournament.” Kellar added that the team is not only coming in with a little chip on their shoulder after falling short last season, but also perhaps a target on their back.
He noted that fellow CCIW schools know how competitive the Titan program is, in baseball, as well as other sports., and that it won’t be a cakewalk getting back to the top of the CCIW.
The Titans will start their season with fourteen road games—not uncommon for the Titans, they often front-load their schedules with non-conference road games—before making their home debut on Mar.
20 against UW-Oshkosh.
The Titans open their season on Friday, Feb. 20, 2026, against Greenville University in a two-day triple-header. Greenville went 15-24 in 2025 and hasn’t had a winning season since 2019, but will start their season before IWU, possibly giving them a leg up on the rusty Titans.
The first pitch of the Titans 2026 season is scheduled for 1 p.m. on Friday at Robert E. Smith Field. Fans can take the two-and-a-quarter hour field trip down to Greenville, Ill., or view the live stats or game recaps on the iwusports.com website.
Junior Luca Morelli at bat. Photo: Audrey Peterson
